Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday July 26, 2009 @03:40AM
from the next-stop-world-domination dept.

christian.einfeldt writes "The LinuxTech.net blog points out that Linux notebooks are currently selling quite well on Amazon's list in Germany. The blog includes screenshots showing the Linux Asus and Aspire notebooks in positions 2 and 4, respectively, on that list. These machines are not netbooks, but full notebooks, albeit on the moderate to low side regarding price and performance. That LinuxTech.net blog was dated 23 July 2009, and the Asus machine is still holding second place more than one day later, while the Acer machine slipped to fifth position, despite the volatile nature of Amazon bestseller lists. While these two data points are just snapshots in time, they are consistent with other data showing that Microsoft itself attributes some of its recent weak earnings to surging sales of low-end notebooks, as well as data showing that the Linux-powered and Unix-powered computers topped Amazon's sales charts in all categories for 2007. If there is to ever be a 'year of desktop (or laptop) Linux', it won't happen all at once, but will creep up in ways similar to what we are seeing now."

I'm not sure how that qualifies as flamebait. It's a lot easier to fit Linux to low end hardware than Mac or Windows. Windows 7 runs on netbooks but it doesn't run that well. And if Linux gets wider acceptance in Europe, that would hardly be a surprise.

It's possible the mod moved the rating with the scroll wheel after selection. It's easy to do and not notice. If you're not paying attention you can start scrolling page but if the rating dropdown is still selected, you'll scroll the selection options. At least in FF, not sure if IE works the same way.

You really have to look closer at that statistic: 88,6 is the percentage of supercomputers that run only Linux. If you really want the number of machines running Linux in that list, you have to add 5.8% which are mixed systems and 2 supercomputers that are listed as running Windows, but are really mixed systems (this is probably done to make Microsoft look a bit better). So we end up having 94,8% of world's 500 fastest computers having Linux installed.

As long as you are not on a laptop and need ACPI, sound and video to work stably. Or deal with kernel updates from your distro that break things after you've got them working again.

I realize these things are not Linux's "fault". I live with them because of Linux's other advantages. But they are a PITA.

Linux is ideal on a netbook. If it is supported by the manufacturer, you won't have these kinds of problems, and enjoy the benefits of freedom and open standards. I've used it since Debian 0.9, which I d

Look, David Hasselhoff is super-creepy and this is why he sold in Germany some while ago. David Hasselhoff was popular 20 years ago. And he was produced by German producers with cheap entertainment songs. Hasselhoff stands for a kind of white coon song. I guess he is taken more serious in the US.

Up until the most recent release, MacOS X has run extremely well on old hardware, to the extent that newer releases were often, in fact faster than their predecessors. I'm basing this opinion based upon my experiences with a 450 Mhz G4 tower that I've had since the 90s, and is now running 10.4. For day-to-day tasks, the machine still runs great. I did some video editing on it a year or two back, and noticed that Final Cut Pro has astonis

Yeah, because the people living here today, are not completely different from back then.;)

Seriously. Germans are so left-extremist nowadays, that I as a semi-foreigner can nearly understand some right-extremists.They fear of being called Nazis for loving their country. For saying anything that could be interpreted as something bad against foreigners, jews, etc. Even if it is true. (Like there being good and bad people everywhere.)

People here *still* are traumatized. Which leads to this opposite-direction e

i am assuming you are referring to world war two, and no, we did not attack the Germans, we attacked the Nazis (Hitler's army that raped almost all of Europe, north Africa & parts of western Russia & Ukraine)...

I used my mod points elsewhere, or I would correct the above moderation. I've been getting 15 points twice a week for a couple of weeks now; I try to follow the guidelines as best I can. Especially in regards to downmods: there's very little reason to downmod, I find. Anything that's obviously flamebait will be ignored, and while there are occasionally trolls here, I think it's usually better to post AC to point them out.

On the whole, I think the slashdot community is a good one, mods included. I suspect th

Americans can be funny people but their lack of comprehension of irony is quite astounding.... [...] But then again I am German-Canadian

So... you, a Canadian, is pointing at Americans (presumably people from the US) as being unable to comprehend irony, when one of (if not) the best known examples of not comprehending irony is the song "Ironic" by Canadian singer Alanis Morissette

That is because the average Joe don't know squat about OSes, hell they often can't even tell you WHAT OS they are running (I often get "Windows something" when I ask which OS a customer is running) but believe you me they DO notice when their (insert Quickbooks/Quicken, Cheapo Lexmark all in one, puzzle games they picked up at Wally World, etc) don't work. There is a REASON why MSI was looking at 400% return rates on their Linux netbooks, I know because I had the same thing happen when I tried selling Linux

Anyone referencing MSI's lousy distribution and support on their netbooks as a reason for Linux not being a viable offering while simultaneously ignoring Dell's continued success in selling Ubuntu based netbooks, laptops, and desktops is either (a) ignorant of the facts or (b) a deliberate troll. On the off chance that you are the former, I suggest you google Dell, linux, netbook and read through a few stories. (One of my personal favorites is the second one that showed up when I just tried the search. This one [liliputing.com].) It is not only possible to successfully sell Linux, apparently Dell has found it to be very easy.:-)

So, who am I going to believe who understands the Linux market? A copmpany that threw out a half hearted, poorly thought out attempt to jump into a new market, or a company that actually/asked/ people what they wanted and then crafted a business strategy to capitalize on what people told them?

I'm sorry there buddy, but I'm afraid logic isn't on your side today. You see, the big fricking difference that nobody seems to be thinking of when comparing a Walmart or me to Dell is this: To buy an Ubuntu box from dell you have to -(A)- Got to the Dell website and SPECIFICALLY look for it, since you will notice NOTHING about Linux on the main page, and -(B)- Have to go around all the "Dell recommends Windows Vista" warnings to pick the Ubuntu version. So the ONLY customers you will EVER get buying Ubuntu

It's not always as bad as you make out. Hardware support is less of an issue than it used to be.

But I'd be interested to know specifically what "home devices" you mean from Best Buy etc. These days most peripherals are standard web cams, printers, scanners and storage devices.Things were different in the days of USB modems, but most people now have dedicated WLAN router-modems and laptops have integrated WLAN, which are generally work in Ubuntu.

I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but Brazil and Germany have very high rates of Linux adoption, far beyond what we see in North America and most of Europe. I'd be surprised if any large number of those Brazilian sales were replaced with Windows.

Last two notebooks I bought came with FreeDos too - A dell Vostro 1400 and a Vostro 1300 (for a friend). The shop was selling windows licenses separately - if you bought one they would install it for you. Or they'll install windows for free if you make enough of the staff laugh:) That's how things work here in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are fun loving people. If you need a favor (or if you want to be taken seriously), make them laugh;)

Here in Israel most of the "geek shops" sell laptops with freedos. Sometimes I'm surprised to see brand name laptops being sold without windows (but with a real warranty), while people I know in the US and Europe complain that they don't have that option.

It's very popular these days, because if you bought a computer ~3-4 years ago, you probably have a copy of XP, and a relatively slow machine. It's common practice to get a laptop without windows and just move your copy from the old machine to the new one. A

Lenovo, at least in Istanbul does use their IBM-DOS advantage that way too. In their business laptops (I actually have one in shop basket), "installed OS" is DOS. I assume it is IBM DOS and the money difference goes to 3GB of RAM I think which is really impressive.

It is a huge issue for MS. As it has some archaic OS installed, I have some time to think whether to set FreeBSD with KDE or go with Windows. If it came with Vista, I would be really lazy to do it.

You have to know that 'major' German PC enthusiast magazines have been publishing tutorials monthly about using Linux since around 2000. Together with installation CDs/DVDs etc. Also their government has a strong push towards using Linux.

They are being smart in that case. The Chinese, too, have their own Linux Distro (Red Flag) -- which government really wants the foundation of their computers (the OS) to be dependent on an American company, not to mention all the possible backdoors built for the FBI/NSA/CIA/etc. OTOH, many agencies of the US Government force you to use Windows in order to deal with them, rather than having an open standard.

I WANT to buy a Linux-based netbook. EEEPC, used to have a model which they upgraded with an SSD drive if you chose the linux option. But the netbook world moves fast, and that model is 6-9 months out of date although still offered. It might not sound like a big deal, but there are netbooks coming on the market with ~1300 x ~750 resolution (good for today's websites) instead of just 1024x600 and capable of actually playing HD video with the upgraded chipsets. But no linux version is offered. Has been that way with any new models released since February as far as I can tell. That's too bad.

And my local Walmart doesn't seem to care. Been offering the same Acer Aspire model (1GB ram and all) since the beginning of the year with no changes.

So just wait for the laptop you want and buy it and install linux on it. Its not likely you are going to save much if anything on a windows free laptop and it sure isn't like linux costs anything to install. Just find something that gets good linux reviews and be happy.

It sucks to pay the Windows tax. There seems to b a bit more hope for those of us that would like to get the laptops without paying the cost of a copy of Windows that we're not going to use, and is non-transferable (Amazon UK, and maybe Dell).

They are being smart in that case. The Chinese, too, have their own Linux Distro (Red Flag) -- which government really wants the foundation of their computers (the OS) to be dependent on an American company,

It's amazing that you can claim to speak for the Chinese government and their inside motivations. The Chinese government has never given an official policy on Red Flag Linux. The Chinese government is as opaque as mud as really their motivations can only be guessed at my experts, not firmly declared by

Don't worry. In autumn a whole new generation of "smartbooks" will come out. Full-HD capable, 1-2 watt, 10 hours of running, and $100-$200.With an ARM CPU. So they won't be able to run any Windows. You can guess what they will mostly be running. (Linux.):D

I wanted to buy a sub-notebook (aka netbook) with linux but I could not find such on my country anywhere from shelf itself. Ordering could over one month and the extra bucks was included when comparing windows. Biggest resellers are just simply saying that Linux versions has be sold out since start and about 6 months ago they were marked such that they will not come back to the selling lines. So only way to get such computer is to buy it with Windows. Even that I never booted Windows but throw right in the mandriva disk and installed it over windows.

It is not nice to be forced to be MS client in statics but not a client for Linux OS. At least Mandriva could get their own static about me because I registered this machine too for their database.

If world would be fair, I could call to MS or Asus and say that I want my information of selling be removed from statics as MS user.

I'll admit that it is extremely difficult and not worth the effort. The point I was trying to make was that getting the discount counts against the no. of Windows users. At best you'd come out neutral, but if enough people do so it becomes more profitable for the OEMs to include Linux as a default option than to spend the extra labour handling refunds.

I'm sorry to say that, but I doubt that this shows a rising interest in Linux from mainstream customers in Germany. If you look at the customer reviews for the Asus notebook [amazon.de] (in German) you will find out that a lot of comments deal with removing Linux and replacing it with either Vista oder Windows 7.
Naturally, customer reviews are not a representative survey but I guess a lot of people simple save the money for the OS and install pirated copies of Windows.

Although I've never admitted it before now, I've been using this secret tactic to save money on Linux for years: I buy a cheap computer with Windows on it, sneak it home, and then just install Linux over it right away! Why pay retail for Linux?

Like many here I admin family computers. A month ago I did an experiment. I told my parents I'd upgrade their aging computer (mobo and main HD change) and as such it would look different. I installed kubuntu instead of the previous system (which you can easily guess). Made sure there were desktop links to firefox, kmail, dolphin and a SD card image transfer script. I didn't even show them the result, just as an experiment. And I left. They called only once after a week: "Yeah it works fine, but we don't have skype anymore", which I promptly remotely installed. I consider this experiment a great success.

I did a similar experiment. I installed Xubuntu on a 166MHz laptop to see if it would run well enough to be usable. Then I asked someone to give it a shot and compare it with her laptop running windows XP and had at least 2GHz processor. After she browsed a few web pages, I asked "Which is faster; Your laptop or this one?" She quickly replied "This one". I chuckled because I knew the truth. This laptop was at least 10x slower than her laptop.

Hmmm, I dunno, I've pretty much stopped reformatting. I run a few anti-malware programs once a month (no background scanners, just good old manual scans regularly) and my installs have remained clean for ages.

My experience is same as yours but parent has a point for regular users. Case in point, I install the Tom Tom GPS software on my system and it installs a craplet in the systray. Your everyday user leaves the craplet there along with the other ones they have accumulated over weeks/month/years. There is absolutely no reason for TomTom to run every time I boot up, sucking up cycles. The simple act of cleaning up after installs is probably one of the best things you can do to keep your system running well (of course there are many other things too). I run XP on an AthlonXP 2600 with 512Meg of ram and it runs well. Original install in 2003. I have sisters whose machines were purchased after mine that I have reinstalled twice because they have slowed down with time.
Firefox/Thunderbird,AV software,Windows Updates,occasional spyware scans, clean out the craplets. Not much more complicated then that.

Very good point. That's the only way to keep Windows fast with a lot of programs installed... it's also the reason my father thinks that filling hard drive space slows down computers - he doesn't realize that all the programs filling his hard drive also installed system tray apps...

That's what I was thinking. I'm reading this on a P3-1ghz/w 512mb RAM running kubuntu 9.04. A 2ghz machine of any breed would smoke this thing. Of course running kubuntu 9.04 doesn't help, but hey at least I'm using swiftfox and it is indeed a lot faster.

Yah, but it's easier to run a virus scanner, spyware remover and adware remover (or even two of each) than it is to get Ubuntu running on a system that isn't fully supported;)...

Think of it this way: Those virus, spyware and adware scanners all have user-friendly GUIs. Linux has GUIs that don't always work, and a CLI... which one do you think inexperienced users are going to choose?

XP runs like a champ (at least in terms of speed) if you keep it clean and the hardware manufacturers manage to write proper drivers...

This is just it; it takes significant expertise to make a year old windows machine run smoothly. People claim that windows is easier to use than Linux, but when I was running XP I needed a lot more knowledge and a lot more effort to keep it working right. I have known so many people who own a perfectly good machine one or two years old, and it's basically unusable because they haven't done proper maintenance. For the average user windows is just a bad choice.

Yes, I do believe that it's an unfair comparison, the problem here being that the bottleneck in a crapware infested system is often the hard drive, which is probably not much slower in the 166MHz system.

RAM, RAM, RAM, Linux more than anything loves RAM. I have a P1 166mhz laptop with 80 MBs of RAM with Debian and IceWM, Opera 9 ran pretty nicely as long as you kept your tab count below ~25 or so, and Abiword was a bit sluggish but still usable.

The big problem of using such a computer today is Flash which even with Gnash instead of Adobe's plugin its a CPU and memory hog (it even makes my current 1 Ghz laptop die a quick and painful death), but if the websites you browse to don't require it there's nothing

I installed kubuntu instead of the previous system (which you can easily guess). Made sure there were desktop links to firefox, kmail, dolphin and a SD card image transfer script.

...and there, I suspect, is the real secret to converting Windows users: first, recognize that your users don't care about KDE vs. Gnome holy war and give them the one that comes out of the gate looking more like Windows than a Mac. Second, a bit of intelligent customization to ensure that they can find the apps they use every day and disguise the fact that they now have different, wacky, names. Third, good after-"sales" support (I'm sure the staff at Buy More would have told them that Skype was windows-only:-) ).

Of course, that's better than you get when you buy Windows (or even Mac) but they have million-buck advertising campaigns and sales incentives instead so they don't need good service.

I had the opportunity to buy an height year old Toshiba laptop very cheap from the company I used to work for. My mom's computer had died a while ago, so I told her I'd give her this one, but it would be "slightly different". I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on it (gnome). After explaining to her that Word and Excel were now called "Open Office" I left her alone with it. I never had any complaints, but what's more, I never got any "my computer is slow" calls anymore neither. This was even so clear to her, that a few weeks ago her best friend called me to ask me if I could install "the windows your mom has" on her computer, after she had had another one of those "YOUR VIRUS IS INFECTED" popups appear

The thing is : for a standard (Internet browser / Email / IM / Fotos / Movies / Music / Wordprocessor / Spreadsheet) user, Linux is not only ready for the desktop, it should be mandatory

The standard user doesn't want to install his own program (or if he does, it's some weird windows95 accounting program he found in the sales bin at his local store, and which runs probably better in wine than it would on XP, let alone Vista). Generally, people don't even KNOW they can install anything. They are rather happy with what is on their computer by default (until MS-Office and Norton start complaining that the 30 days trial is over and that they should pay)

False positives - I live in Germany, and of the 10 people I know who've bought laptops in the last year, 7 went with FreeDos/Linux notebooks. The first thing they did when they got them was to install XP Pro...

Since there are so few Linux-pre-installed laptops, most people that do want to run Linux are forced to purchase one with MS Windows preloaded on it and then install Linux. These are counted as MS Windows sales. Unfortunately, they also continue to fuel the machine that prevents choice in the first place.

Anyway, every laptop/notebook I have purchased in the last 15 years has forced MS Windows on it, with the sole exception of the Asus EEE 1000 I purchased from Amazon, and that model is now discontinued.

I know a lot of people who buy MS Windows laptops to run Linux (granted, I am active in a Unix User's Group).

But also keep in mind that some people do own a legal and transferable license for MS-Windows and don't want to have to buy it again. Purchasing the Linux version might be as close to "blank" as they can get.

Of course, you and I both know that MORE people are just illegally loading MS-Windows.

I look forward to a day when we are not forced to buy ANY OS with ANY computer. I just hope that day will come.

This meme, linux an pirated windows is so much __crap__, if you want to use windows, were it not for M$ trying to bulk the latest version sales numbers, here we go again with W-7, users would get a pre-install + activation key for one-off purchases, and install whatever they wanted, including linux legally. This is end-user only.In SOHO->Worldwise_Enterprise, the game is very different, first the OEM price of Windoze+Crapware is essentially zero, since M$, like all computer companies expect to make their

That's just it - those other 3 bought Vista/Vista w/ Downgrade laptops. Not a single one of my friends who've bought laptops in the past year actually bought them to run Linux - unless you count the obligatory Ubuntu/Knoppix/SysRescueCD live-CD for troubleshooting.

In fact, I know very few (3) people who run Linux - one on a decade-old laptop that won't run XP (although he also has an openMoko phone that runs some form of Debian), one on a DAW setup (real time kernel and all that), and another one that's an

I never bought a notebook for that reason. To me, the point of a notebook is that you can carry it with you anywhere if you want, but they're too bulky for that, not to mention the battery life makes it impossible to do any real work away from the grid.

I was an early buyer of the Eee701, and I love it. I will only buy a notebook when I'm done with desktops and the notebook will be my main machine. This day will be the day id Software stop making games. (Since Quake 1, I always buy a new machine when id release a new engine.)

My apologies. I linked to the incorrect story in the main summary above. The LinuxTech.net blog mentioning the placement on Amazon Germany is actually here [linuxtech.net]. Again, my apologies for the inconvenience and inaccuracy.
Christian Einfeldt

**IRONY ON**
Our minister for internal affairs Mr. Wolfgang Schäuble:
- hates the internet
- wants to censor it
- wants to control it,
and he has a strong meaning on immigration, if you are coming from the liberal U.S. you are not welcome here,
you could induce liberal thoughts in too many of my fellow citizen.
Thats why there won't be more of you like us, you simply won't get the citizenship.
**IRONY OFF**
Na, it's not that hard to get the german citizenship, we like americans, also we do like most of our western EU-neighbours,
and our population is decreasing if you want to join the club, do it now;)